Costs Soar Almost $3 Billion at Plutonium Plant

By Jim Snyder -
Mar 20, 2013

Costs to build a South Carolina
plant to convert weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear
reactors have soared almost $3 billion, exceeding estimates by
more than 50 percent, the Government Accountability Office said.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, told a House
spending panel today that the Energy Department program will
cost at least $7.7 billion, up from a previous forecast of $4.9
billion.

The plant built by a Shaw Areva MOX Services LLC consortium
that includes Paris-based Areva SA (AREVA) also won’t open until
November 2019, more than three years later than the October 2016
target, the GAO said in testimony to a House Appropriations
Committee panel on energy and water development.

The mixed oxide, or MOX, plant is being built at the
Savannah River Site in South Carolina, where the U.S. for
decades produced plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Tom Clements, southeastern campaign coordinator with
Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, said the project
is too expensive to continue.

“They chose the most expensive, most complex and most
complicated path and it’s simply not working,” Clements said in
an interview. “Cost is simply going to kill this project.”

In 2000, the U.S. and Russia agreed to dispose of 34 metric
tons of plutonium and recycle it as fuel for nuclear reactors.